u/SnooDonkeys135

I'm a high school senior heading to a top 5/10 European university for Mathematics in the fall, with about 4 months of summer free. I don't want to do it just to make my CV look better, I'm genuinely just interested in doing research in maths/economics and I have 4 months of summer break to pursue that. Of course I understand that my role will be minimal, I'm not expecting anything major just anything to get hands-on research experience.

My background: 40/45 IB, I've done an independent essay applying the Vasicek interest rate model to predict US bond yield movements (unpublished), and I have basic Python skills (data structures, algorithms, some data analysis). I also completed a statistical methods course through LSE.

A few questions for anyone who's been on either side of this:

Is cold emailing professors a realistic path, or is it mostly a dead end at my level?
Should I focus on professors at my university specifically, or is it better to email elsewhere since they'll be my professors soon?
Would it be more valuable to spend the summer doing independent research and look for formal roles once I'm actually at university?
Is there a specific academic/research oriented CV template that would help me?

Any advice is appreciated, thanks!

Rate my CV please (high school student looking for internships over summer)

High School Student Looking for Research Roles (is it realistic?)